At 106, Ray. W. Hooker of Gloucester may the oldest NASA retiree

GLOUCESTER — John Glenn may be the oldest living astronaut, but he’s still a young pup compared to Ray W. Hooker.

Hooker, 106, was in the twilight of his NASA career when Glenn rocketed to superstardom in 1962 as the first American to orbit Earth.

Born in 1906, Hooker grew up on a farm in Boswell, Ind. — about 30 miles from Lafayette.

He served as water boy for his father’s football team when they played against a squad led by Jim Thorpe, who only years before was the star of the 1912 Olympic games. He was an engineering student at Purdue University in 1927 when Charles Lindbergh became a national icon by making the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

Hooker was signing up to be a pilot in the military when the recruiter, after determining that he was colorblind, tore up the application. Undeterred, Hooker built his own airplane.

In 1930, he arrived in Hampton to begin work at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. He helped build many of the facility’s wind tunnels, which were used to test fighter planes in World War II and other conflicts.

“I wasn’t the research type,” Hooker said recently from the Gloucester County assisted living center he has called home for the past three years. “I liked to get the structure built.”

Hooker also helped establish Wallops Island Flight Facility in 1945, a rocket launch site still in use today. In 1958, Congress created NASA, which absorbed NACA. Hooker had already been employed there for 28 years.

Hooker helped set up infrastructure needed to put Glenn and fellow Mercury astronauts into space. In doing so, he traveled the world, including a few years in Australia where he served as NASA’s liaison.

“I spent two real nice years with the Aussies,” he said.

Hooker retired in 1968, one year before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. He has been traveling, sailing, flying and spending time with his family ever since. He attributes his longevity to his parents; both lived until they were 93.

Hooker has a white beard, plastic glasses and pair of hearing aides. He keeps up with current events by reading multiple newspapers and surfing the Internet with his tablet computer.

NASA does not track retirees, but Hooker may well be the agency’s oldest, NASA chief historian Bill Barry said.